Review by

Roxana Toheaneau Shields cont..

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My favourite image from Jo’s work is a postcard size photograph covered with tracing paper allowing only a small square cut (1cm x 1cm) to reveal a detail of the image. The unveiled detail is a man kneeling near one of the benches from the pathway near the Minster graveyard. This minimalist way of presenting an apparent snapshot takes the subject beyond a simple quotidian observation. The detail acquires enormous significance – the isolation of this man through a presentation devise, focuses your attention on his behaviour. Is he kneeling because he lost something or is he in pain or is he sick or is he praying? When I saw this image I thought that the man was stricken by an unprecedented suffering in the middle of the town. His kneeling in a public place made me think of a terrible tragedy. For a moment I was there with this man in his quest. I was intrigued.

I asked Jo about her images and she told me that the ‘Watch Over’ project is about “The everyday extraordinary. The quality of life, stuff which goes on. The people who make the soul of the town – the village within the town.” Jo’s work captures something about all of us through painstakingly minute observations. These observations are not the scientific cold dissections of a town they are intimate portraits resulting from caring about the place and its soul. The artist records these private affairs in public places with photography (the video is a sequence of projections of many Polaroids dated with the time and the day when they were taken).

The other artist, Alex Buhagiar presents work which deals with the public space and our relation with it. She uses different media to convey interesting ideas about the environment and not only our awareness of it but also possible interactions and actions with our surroundings. She says: “In the current exhibition, local groups, concerned about the environment, were invited to bring their publicity material to the gallery and also to spend time during the course of the show in the gallery talking with visitors. The inclusion of such groups in the gallery expresses my concerns about our environment more strongly and directly than any other form I can think of.  For me, they represent the idea of being 'active', of translating concerns into actions.” There are a plethora of environmental groups in Reading and Alex uses what she calls a ‘gallery look’ to invite a creative dialog with those group (some of these groups are: Friends of the Earth, LETS, The Berkshire Ornithological Club, Rising Tide, Reading Borough Council, Berkshire trust for conservation Volunteers, Greenpeace, Tree for Cities and others).

Alex’s work is like a large installation celebrating different ways of engaging with the outside. And why shouldn’t one of them be through art? She raises questions about the role of art in contemporary life, probing the borderlines of art with carefully constructed visual concepts. Alex asks questions like: “What is art good for? Is it there to entertain?  To inform?  To bring people together? To be politically engaged? What if the aesthetic is boring?”

My favourite part of Alex’s work is: “Churchyard Survey 1,262 pieces of Chewing Gum”, a sculpture installation which involved the actual chewing of one thousand two hundred and sixty two strips of gum and their presentation as beautiful compounded sculptures. The tension between the appealing form of this work (curvaceous outlines and its enticing smell), the understanding of the process of its creation and the use of such an innovative material is entrancing. I like work which plays with your perceptions and expectations in order to create a fresh and challenging artistic response.

This exhibition is one of those events through which contemporary art rehabilitates itself; it proposes interesting questions, looks at the world in different ways, makes you wonder and respond aesthetically and intellectually, uses humour leaving you with an absorbing view of a place and its people.

© - Jo Thomas - 2006